This story is a reporting partnership between Mongabay Latam and La Barra Espaciadora. Balsa wood is a hot commodity in Ecuador, with the country exporting $402 million worth of the timber in…
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — In a far-flung slice of the Brazilian Amazon, a potholed highway cuts hundreds of miles through the heart of the rainforest. In its most rudimentary…
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The thick plumes of smoke stretched for miles across this slice of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, blanketing the dense rainforest surrounding it. Soon, they drifted…
Tanintharyi, Myanmar’s portion of the spit of land that splits the Gulf of Thailand from the Andaman Sea, is still swathed in old growth rainforest home to a unique medley…
Virunga National Park’s forests are some the most biodiverse in Africa and among the last bastions of mountain gorillas, okapis, Ruwenzori duikers and many other endangered species. Guarded by some…
Situated deep in the middle of Brazil, Xingu Indigenous Park encompasses some of the most biodiverse rainforest in the country and is home to dozens of Indigenous communities and a…
Satellite imagery reveals several areas of primary rainforest were cleared alongside agricultural fields in the Brazilian Amazon, all in close proximity to Indigenous and protected lands. In March, the Global…
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) contains the bulk of Africa’s humid rainforest. But forests that were once dense, impenetrable and continuous are increasingly fractured by deforestation. New satellite…
San Rafael National Park/Proposed National Reserve sits in eastern Paraguay, quietly encompassing a remnant of the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest, a unique biome that stretches between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay…
An expansive clearing of primary forest has been detected in a protected area in the Brazilian Amazon, possibly driven by illegal mining activities. In March, the Global Land Analysis and…
For the past several years, Colombia’s Tinigua National Natural Park has been racked by one of the highest levels of deforestation of any such protected area in the country. According…
Covering a vast peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Thailand on Cambodia’s southern coast, Botum Sakor is one of the largest national parks in the country and known…
Tucked away on the Caribbean side of Honduras lies the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, an area some in size with abundant green forests, rivers, ponds, and a great variety of…
Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary sprawls across a vast expanse of Cambodia’s eastern reach. But much of what used to be covered in lush rainforest has been laid barren by deforestation.…
Forest loss in Brazil’s lush Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area marches on, driven largely by a hunger for beef, emboldened land grabbers, and a lack of law enforcement. Triunfo…
In a far-flung stretch of the Brazilian Amazon, the dense rainforest is slowly giving way to neat rows of oil palm that stretch for miles. Beyond the plantations, a narrow…
For the past several years, the Colombian Amazon has been hit harder by deforestation than any other region in the country, according to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental…
“It started when some people from the government came around the community telling us that we were illegally occupying the land,” Chhae Kimsrour said in June 2020. “I’ve lived here…
Stretching along the narrow spit of land that connects the Malay peninsula to the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region is home to a confluence of animals and…
While in many places, ecosystems and wildlife are under increasing threat and suffering population declines, Vietnam’s Van Long Nature Reserve provides a light in the darkness. The reserve is home…
“It was the same court, the same actors, the same script — it was just like the sequel,” laughed Ouch Leng as he recounted what is now his second arrest…
Deforestation is so rampant throughout Madagascar, an island far larger than California, that it’s easy to forget the impact of tree clearance in any one specific area of the country…
The planned construction of three luxury residential estates in vital wildlife refuge and popular tourist site Bokor National Park marks the latest update in a wider tale of loss for…
Indonesia’s Kerinci Seblat National Park is the largest national park on the island of Sumatra and the second-largest park in Southeast Asia. It is home to a wide variety of…
Mario’s nervousness is evident on the other end of the phone as he speaks about how three men tried to stab him in November 2020. This wasn’t the first time something…
The Siona are a binational people, their territory straddling two countries: Sucumbíos province in northeastern Ecuador and in the Putumayo department in southeastern Colombia. But the forest they depend on…
The Catatumbo River originates in northeastern Colombia’s Norte de Santander Department and flows to Venezuelan Lake Maracaibo. For generations, it has provided passage for fishermen and small farmers; but increasingly,…
It was August 26, 2020. Dirlene Mejía, a park ranger who works in the area around Concepción Lake, a protected area located in eastern Bolivia, had just left for her…
Between 2010 and 2020, South America lost an average of 2.6 million hectares of forest per year, according the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In other…
Under the thick blanket of smoke, relentless flames spread with dizzying speed over swaths of Pantanal Matogrossense National Park, its grasslands parched by months of drought. In a charred marshland,…
